good elephant pottery

This past weekend I got to have a real treat ... a class in watercolor painting by renowned painter Jing-Jy Chen. She gave a class for me and several of my potter friends from the Greenbelt Community Center. Just watching Jing-Jy paint makes me feel more enlightened.

Here are the things that I painted: a crane, cherry blossoms, bamboo, and fish. I need a lot of practice. But also, I would love to adapt these techniques and styles for slip, glazes, and underglazes on some of my pottery work. Stay tuned!

Here is the group who attended. From left-right: me, Jing-Jy, Janet Evander, Judy Goldberg-Strassler, Karen Arrington, Lorraine DeSalvo, and Margaret Lukomska.

While my intermediate students were trying to conjure up an early spring, my advanced students were trying to conjure up brownies.

Back row l-r: Alan Dowdy, Karen Arrington, me. Front row l-r: Karen Riedlinger, me again, and Amy Castner.

In my Intermediate Wheel classes, we are trying to will Spring to arrive sooner.

From left to right, the birdhouses were made by: Margaret Lukomska, Jonathan Gordy, Jenny Adams, Margaret again, Kuniko Wallis, me, Judy Goldberg-Strassler, a joint effort by Judy/Quianna Douglas, Jonathan again, Chris Landers, Carolyn Neuendorffer, a joint effort by Judy/Quianna/Melanie Choe, and Kara Duffy. 

Busy working in the background are Judy, Jenny, Jeri, Jonathan, and Melanie. Apologies to Debra Suarez and Lauren Hammer, who also made some lovely birdhouses but I couldn't find them in the studio for the photo shoot (they must've been be in the kiln). 

Yeah, the groundhog let us down, so we're taking matters into our own hands.

Not just for me and my pottery students, I want all potters to have the world at their feet. I'm working towards that one potter at a time. I thought our booth at last year's Greenbelt Festival of Lights was a screaming success. This year, my students and I improved our sales by over 17%! This is our third year having this collaborative booth, and it now operates at the level of a serious business. 

I think I can pinpoint the difference-maker. Last year, after our furious selling pace on Saturday, our booth looked half-full on Sunday. It's harder to attract people into a booth if it looks like the good stuff may be gone. This year, we brought enough inventory to keep the booth looking full for both days of the show, and our sales on Sunday were much better. I can apply this insight to my own shows. I had two shows this year (Artscape Baltimore and Bethesda Row) where I had very few pots left for the last day. Sales were pretty slow on those days, but I've always thought it wasn't worth bringing more pots, because last day sales were always slower anyways. But now I know better. This means hauling in more boxes of pots, and hauling out more. But 17% matters. Here comes that recurring conclusion again, anything worth doing takes a lot of hard work. 

Speaking of hard work, it really gratifies me that my students are having this much success. It reflects their preparation and hard work. Not just leading up to the show, but with all the dedication they pour into their pottery work year-round. They deserve it! My ego feels pretty good too. 

This weekend is Greenbelt's Festival of Lights! The show is at the Greenbelt Community Center, where I teach my pottery classes. For the third year, I will be sharing a large booth with my super-talented students from the Advanced Functional Pottery class. This class is about both pottery skill and design, and everything we make is functional. One of the projects we worked on this year was a Three-Part Condiment Server:

Carol Wisdom's hand-built leafy dishes look organic, but fit together like a puzzle.
 

Amy Castner's small wheel-thrown bowls were altered to subtly hug each other.
 

Alan Dowdy cut and assembled his three compartments into one pot.
 

Karen Riedlinger made graduated sizes that nest together.
 

And here's mine! This is not the set I made during class (I sold that one a few months ago) but a design I developed more recently. As you can probably see, I took inspiration from both Carol's and Amy's designs. The pointy corners make good pouring spouts too.

Other projects we worked on this year include pitchers, canisters, ornaments, dinner plates, platters. We'll have lots of great pottery in every price range. Plus lots of these students were also part of the wood-firing, we'll be proudly showing off those toasty pots too. 

Click this logo for the event's website. Hope to see you there!

I remember planning the very first wood-firing for the Greenbelt Community Center three years ago, not sure if I could get 8 people to sign up. This year, the 2011 workshop had 14 spots, and on the first day of registration, it was filled. This time I was nervous about organizing 14 people. First-timers had to talk to me before signing up, so I could make sure they were well-suited for this unusual experience. I only wanted to bring students who were familiar with the aesthetics of wood-fired pottery, and who had some idea of how much work and cooperation was involved. It's too much effort to make for people who can't appreciate it, but it's joyous fun with people who do. This is really important to me, to make sure wood-firings are fun. Not that the education aspect is any less important. But it takes a crew of people to get through this, so if folks aren't working together smoothly, you really can't learn much. On the other hand, if your group consists of smart, intrepid, genuine pottery loving, nice people, and pyromaniacs ... well, let the fun begin.

We moved our workshop to a different venue this year, to Baltimore Clayworks. And boy were we happy with this decision! Their kiln is a two-chamber noborigama, larger and more complex than the one we had been visiting before. And it is operated in a first-class manner by kiln manager Jim Dugan and his assistant Jeremy Wallace. They provided tons of leadership and expertise, while making sure everyone got as much hands-on contact with the kiln as possible. 

Here's Jeremy directing traffic, while students line up to hand him pots, and Kori Rice places the pots into the kiln. Everyone who wanted got a chance to climb into the kiln and do what Kori's doing.

Here's a complete stack of pots inside of one of the chambers.

When the kiln was full, the doors were closed with carefully stacked bricks. Vejune Svotelis and Alan Dowdy worked on one, while Kori and Jeremy stacked the other. Loading the kiln and stacking the bricks took an entire day. 

The next morning started with sealing the brick doors with newspaper and clay slip, kind-of like paper maché. Good messy fun.

And then the fire started. Here are Carol Wisdom and Kelly Buck-Hunt sorting wood planks while the beginning stage of the fire, known as the preheat fire, crackles away.

Kuniko Wallis keeps the preheat fire going.

The preheat fire grew into a bed of coals inside the kiln. (front to back) Vejune Svotelis, Jeri Holloway, and Christina Guidorizzi scrape and poke at the coals to get ash to fly up into the kiln and onto our pots.

More ash was introduced through the main stoking port of the kiln. Here is Janet Evander pouring a cup of ash onto a wood plank right before tossing it into the kiln.

The stoking of wood planks through the main stoking port began around 3pm. Just about everyone got a chance to do it. Notice how as the evening grew darker, the stokes grew from one plank at a time, to five at a time.

Our fearless leader, Jim Dugan, dodges sparks while checking a cone pack.

My stoking shift was officially over at 12:30am, past midnight. And just like many others from the earlier shifts, I found it difficult to leave! You feel so connected to what you're doing. But you can't do it by yourself, and there comes a time to let others take over. For this firing, a particularly brave few volunteered for the overnight shift: Amy and her husband Matt, Kori, and Tom Baker. They took over at 12:30am and worked until 7:30am. An incredibly difficult task, but they also got to see the kiln at its most spectacular stage.

And then the waiting began. We had to wait three days until we could return and unload the kiln. On the left are Karen Arrington, Carol Wisdom, and Karen Morgenstern scraping and scrubbing off the newspaper before the bricks could be removed. On the right is Janet handing bricks to Amy.

And finally we got to have our pots. And it was worth the wait, and all the hard work! The results were gorgeous, in some cases overwhelming. The celadon (my favorite glaze) was deep green, ultra shiny, and full of crackle. The shino, which usually fires to an understated white, was the biggest surprise. This time we got all different shades of peach and orange, with an almost pearly shine. The salt and soda glazed pieces were unbelievable too. Here are some of the finished pots ... click on the thumbnails for full-size images.

Here are all of my pots back in my dining room. A week has gone by and I am still goofy with happiness over them. Still discovering new details. I had a personal quest for my own pots at this firing. I want to become good at hakeme, those gracefully loose brush strokes of slip. I made a lot of small pots to practice with various brushes, strokes, and claybodies. I'm happy with the results, but as usual I can't wait to do it again, so I can refine and deepen my techniques.

I don't think I'll bring any of these pots to my next show, I'd like to hang on to them a little longer. Maybe I'll be ready to part with them by the end of the year. 

This was truly the best wood-firing I've ever been a part of, from start to finish.

My Intermediate Wheel class asked for a challenging project. So we made Oval Baking Dishes with Lids. This was a three week project. Week 1: we threw the pot's wall with a lid gallery, then shaped it into an oval. Week 2: we attached the wall to a slab floor, then draped another slab over the pot's rim, to form a nice curve for our lids. Week 3: we carefully trimmed the lids to fit into the galleries, then added handles. This photo depicts an awful lot of hard work, precision, and patience. Pottery credits from back to front: Carolyn Neuendorffer, Quianna Douglas, Andrea Waters, Melanie Choe, Pam Emery, Andrea Schewe, Jeri Holloway, Lorraine DeSalvo, yours truly, and Judy Goldberg-Strassler. Special thanks to Karen Arrington, one of my advanced students who was working in the studio on "lid night." She is a veteran of oval lids, and she helped us out a lot. 

We made Side-Handle Teapots in my advanced class. Although we noted with some regret that these pots are not ambidextrous, we all decided to make right-handed teapots anyways. The community center asked us instructors to take photos of our classes, for use in upcoming course catalogs. So the class let me pose them into this fun group photo, along with our right-handed teapots. (l-r) Karen Morgenstern, Diana Guillermo, Kori Rice, Amy Castner, Carol Wisdom, Karen Riedlinger, and Karen Arrington.

I admit it ... art festivals are good for my ego. I mean, I spend most of my work hours alone in a shadowy basement making pots. At shows, I get heaped with positive feedback, and these shows serve as a gathering place where I can stay in touch with my friends. Making money doesn't hurt either.

But do you want to know what causes a far more massive ego trip? Watching my students succeed at an art festival. This past weekend was the Festival of Lights at the Greenbelt Community Center, which is where I teach my pottery classes. Five of my students and I had a booth, and it was gangbusters! Near the end, the expression on their faces was a combination of delirium and shock. And I thought I might explode with pride. 

Let me clarify ... these students are from my Advanced Wheel class, and their work is not what you'd typically expect of "student pottery." Not just anyone can sign up for this class, the center lets me decide who's ready. We tackle some heady issues, both technical and aesthetic. They are charged with developing a personal body of work. As you can see in the photo above, their work reflects an awful lot of skill and thought and practice. And for those who are interested, we discuss professional issues too, such as selling at an art festival.

In the photo above, Karen Arrington and Amy Castner smoothly handle customers amongst our dwindling number of pots. The other potters who participated were Karen Morgenstern, Kori Rice, and Karen Riedlinger. And the photo on the left shows how much smaller our display was on the second day. And our sales staff got smaller too (that's Kori's son Dexter). 

For now, we should just celebrate. But I know some of them are already analyzing their results and thinking about next year. They grow up so fast (sniff).